0s & 1s Goes Beyond the Obvious Points About Cyber-Dependence

While the throngs of recent films detailing our cultures inundation with social media are generally content to make their obvious points about cyber-dependence and call it a day, 0s & 1s is after slightly bigger game. No new revelations abound in Eugene Kotlyarenkos playfully formalist tale of a twentysomethings search for his lost computer, but unlike Catfish (to give just one example), 0s & 1s goes beyond merely communicating what it feels like to have ones consciousness colonized by spectacle, employing its exhaustive catalog of new media in instructive ways. A riot of pop-up screens that ape everything from Facebook to first-person shooters, Kotlyarenkos film makes visible the invisible presence that defines our everyday social encounters. A conversation is visualized entirely via IM chat; when protag James Pongo (Morgan Krantz) gets drunk at a party and loses his computer, the director gives us a Persona moment. Instead of ripping away the film strip mid-movie as in Bergmans film, Kotlyareknos digital production simulates a system fail. During his quest to track down his missing laptop, Jamess unrelenting douchiness and his friends essential emptiness grow tiresome, but thats precisely the point. As digital media becomes more vivid, people tend to hollow out.